justice is possible. on this episode of "death row stories" a triple murder of unimaginable brutality. >> this is the one case that screamed out for the death penalty. >> an accused soldier who can't even convince his own attorney. >> i thought that tim was guilty of all get out. >> until the state's case fell apart. >> the primary witness said i felt like i was sending an innocent man to prison. >> and then the state's case takes a shocking turn. >> he said, take to a seat, i have something to tell you. >> there is a body underwater. >> he was butchered and murdered. >> many people proclaim their innocence. >> in this case, there are a number of things that stink. >> this man is remorseless.

>> he needs to pay for it with his life. >> the electric chair flashed in front of my eyes. >> get a conviction at all costs, and let the truth fall where it may. ♪ mother's day 1985, a beautiful morning in fayetteville, north carolina. >> the dogwoods were blooming, the rolling hills, neighbors know each other, and of course, it's all military families. it's within a mile of the fort bragg base, itself. >> but there was something amiss at the home of the eastburn family. >> the neighbors noticed that the newspapers in the drive way were piling up, and they knew that the husband was out of town. so that naturally raised curiosity.

they went and peeked in the window and a heard the baby crying, and then he called the authorities. >> i received the call from the dispatch of a homicide on the somerville road. when i got there, there was one deputy who had been in the building. his eyes teared up and he had his hat down and shaking his head and he said, i don't understand this. >> the baby was taken to safety, and detective bittle and his partner entered the house. >> as we went down the hallway, we looked this the bedroom to the left-hand side, and the daughter who was in the first grade was still in bed and had a star wars blanket pulled up around her neck. she was stabbed ten times. you could see the stab wounds through the blanket. we went further to the master bedroom, and the youngest child was laying there on her back. her throat had been cut. almost decapitated, and on the right-hand side, facing the bed was the mother.

the bra was up around her neck. her panties had been cut off of her, and she had 14 stab wounds. >> the victims were katy eastburn, age 32, kara, age 5, and erin age 3. >> for so long after that homicide, at night, i could close my eyes and see the children. >> and her husband gary was an air force captain. he rushed back from training in alabama. >> it is hard to explain. you just stop. the world stops. >> when you looked into his eyes, there was a void there. it tears your heart out. but you have to gather yourself, because you have a job to do. we will find out who did this. >> there was evidence all over that house.

they found a head hair in ms. eastburn's bed. and they found a pubic hair at the scene of the rape. they found fingerprints a all over the house. they had bloody footprints. they had a semen sample. they were certain that physical evidence would lead them to whoever killed this family. >> after walking through the house, gary eastburn also provided a tantalizing lead. they were going to move to england when he finished training in alabama. the family had decided to sell the dog, so they put an ad out in the local fort bragg and katy eastburn wrote a letter to her husband saying that a nice man came out to get the dog. >> we didn't know who it was, but anybody who had been out to that house, we wanted to talk

to. >> outside of the crime scene someone approached investigators with critical information from the night of the murders. >> there was a young male named patrick cone who said that he saw a big white dude walking down the driveway. he had blond hair about 6'2" or 6'3" and he had on a members only black jacket and a stocking cap and a mustache. >> they passed on the road and the person said that he was getting an early start that morning and got into the white chevette and drove off. >> i said this man has a black man's nose and a droopy eye. >> he said, that is what i saw. >> and six days after the murders, the police put out a call for the man who adopted the eastburn's dog. army sergeant home with his wife, daughter and new dog,

eating lunch, and the daughter said, hey, that is you. >> he said, hey, that is you. so he packed up and went to the sheriff's office. >> i stopped in the track, and i looked at him and i said, this is the man right here after i looked at the composite. >> they put together a photo lineup, and settled on number two, and that is tim hennis. he said, are you sure? and he said, yes, i am sure. and he picked out the white chevette, and he said, yes, that is the car. he was being cooperative and they wanted samples of the hair and the blood and the saliva which he gave and midway through, he realized that he was the suspect, and he was getting madder and madder and madder. >> get that thing out of my face. >> he is the most arrogant human being i ever saw in my life. he just felt like, you can't touch me. well, yes, we will touch you.

we reached out and touched him. >> at 1:00 a.m., the sheriff's arrested timothy hennis and charged him with rape and capital murder. he was charged with capital murder and he would face the death penalty. the arrest sent shock waves through the tight knit community around fort bragg. >> fort bragg is the most patriotic community, and when somebody is convicted of murder, that just stirs the community. >> any idea who this would be? >> well, she was getting some strange phone calls. >> don't you give any ideas who it might be. >> i ain't giving no ideas. >> they get outraged. justice must be done. >> and to defend their son they hired two young lawyers. >> i thought that tim was guilty as all get-out, so i didn't particularly care for tim. but the law school i went to

stressed the importance of taking unpopular cases. >> and then days immediately afterwards the news got worse for tim hennis, and he had no alibi and angela hennis was out of town all weekend. on saturday morning, he dragged a barrel out in the middle of the backyard and started burning stuff. something his neighbors had never seen him do before. >> i don't know what it was, but something that he burned. >> the lady who owns the cleaners and he said that man that you all arrested brought that black members only jacket into my cleaners friday, and didn't look suspicious to me. >> the bank card of katy eastburn had been used twice. friday night and saturday morning, $150 each time and they found out that he was late on his rent by a tune of $300 which he paid on monday. >> and there was a lot of

physical evidence that was being tested and if any physical evidence came back to tim, he was dead. so we wanted him to come in ahead of time to get him to plead before it came out. >> but to richardson's surprise, hennis refused to consider a plea deal. he said something that haunted me. he said, they can test whatever they want, i was not in that house, i did not do it, and it is just that simple. >> and when the lab reports with blood type, footprints and fingerprints came back, they corroborated hennis' account. >> the physical evidence had not matched tim hennis. none of it had. >> inconclusive or negative. there wasn't a shred of physical evidence that was linking tim to the crime. >> billy's viewpoint then was i must get this man exonerated because he didn't do it. >> someone other than my client committed this crime. >> from that point on, i was totally convinced that he was innocent. >> but even without physical evidence to link him to the

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before he adopted the eastburn's dog in may 1985, sergeant tim hennis had a steady job in the military and growing daughter he was devoted to. and then hennis was arrested for the brutal murder of katy eastburn and her two little girls, aged 5 and 3. hennis' lawyer had come to believe in his innocence. >> i was totally convinced watching him interact with angela, because they do have a beautiful marriage and watching him with his daughter, tim is extremely good with children. i remember with my children how good he was.

>> of the fingerprints, blood, semen found at the crime scene none of it linked to hennis. >> down here, we didn't have the equipment and the facilities that they have up north. we had no dna down here when this crime occurred. i would have liked to have had a fingerprint. he left a shoe or something that he dropped to tie him to it, but i thought that we had enough to justify the case in the trial. >> the trial began on may 27th, 1986. >> everybody wanted in that courtroom. the bailiffs a couple of times had to break up fistfights. >> the prosecutors called it the show. they wanted to emphasize how gruesome the murder was, so they built a screen that took up the whole wall, and they took the

slides of kara and jana eastburn on the autopsy table and spread it out with no clothes. >> and he said, what do i do if it is not bothering him, because he is looking like a cold-blooded killer, and if he is looking upset, then he expresses guilt. what can he do? >> this went on for two days, slide after slide after slide. >> i felt like i was in a slam dunk competition with michael jordan. >> prosecutor william van story also told the jury that hennis' motive was sex. >> his wife was out of town, and so his wife had just had a baby, and so he decided to make a pass at the mother of three with whom he got the dog. >> and he said, no, i am a friendly person, and with that temper of his, he lost it. >> billy richardson emphasized the lack of physical evidence to the jury, but prosecutors argued

that the absence of blood on hennis' members only jacket was evidence of guilt. >> they kept saying that there was no blood because he took the jacket to the dry cleaners. >> the jacket was a damning piece of evidence. >> and richardson also undercut pat cohen who had i.d.'d him leaving the eastburn home. and he videotaped him in a tour of the crime scene. >> when you start to listen to his story, he is all over the place. >> and i brought my girlfriend some roses. >> you brought her some roses on sunday. >> no, it was candy. no, it was roses. >> we kept asking, are you sure about that? >> and he said, well, you are right, now that i am out here, i probably didn't see that. no, no, no i can't see that. >> but on the witness stand, cone cast aside doubt. >> he said that the lawyers have been tricking me and pressuring me, and i picked out the right guy. >> finally, prosecutors presented a surprise witness. a woman who said that two days

after the murder, she saw the killer using katy eastburn's stolen bank card. >> all of a sudden, the state introduced lucille cook, little old lady. who saw the killer use the bank card. >> and she said, i did not tell the truth the first time, because it was a tall white man with a mustache, a blond headed guy, and he got into the tiny white car. that is the guy who used it before i did. and pointed right to tim hennis, and that is who was sitting right there. >> after she testified, i went into the bathroom and just threw-up. >> the jury deliberated for three the days. >> it was a quarter of 5:00 on a friday afternoon when the jury knocked. he was guilty on three counts. he would get the death penalty times three. tim hennis could hear his father

sobbing in the courtroom. he had never heard that before. >> when that jury said that he is guilty, you still had faith that he was telling the truth? >> always. never once. >> not a doubt in your mind? >> no, never. >> that time i felt like i did, because i felt that we got our man, and this is the one case that truly screamed out for the death penalty. >> tim hennis had spent his entire career serving the military, and now he was serving time on death row. but not long after his arrival hennis received a mysterious letter. it said, "mr. hennis, i did the crime, and you are doing the time. mr. x." >> the letter provided no concrete leads only adding to hennis' torment.

>> he got visits from his family, and his daughter is now 2 1/2 years old. and she would bang her hands on the plexiglass and say, daddy, open it, open it. why won't it open? >> billy richardson felt responsible for the client's predicament. >> we did not do as good of a job as we were capable. so i made up my mind right then that i was going to be the lawyer that i was supposed to be. so i got off of my butt and i went to work. >> richardson and his partner quickly filed an appeal to the north carolina supreme court. they had to decide what to emphasize, from mishandling evidence to possible perjury. >> they quickly settled on photographs. >> they quickly settled on the photographs. that presentation was thought to

have riled up the jury and pointed at him over and over again and you see that picture? he did it. you see that picture? he did it. >> our supreme court didn't just read the briefs but they got a projector and saw the show themselves, and within 22 day, they said, give them another trial. >> it broke all of our hearts, because we had to call gary and say, you have to go through it one more time. >> billy richardson reinvestigated every aspect of the case. >> we were so much better prepared for the second trial. when i started digging, we found how many things that we didn't know at the first trial. >> richardson began with hennis' alibi for the night after the murder when somebody used katy eastburn's bank card. >> tim hennis had 24-hour duty at fort bragg with his unit. he could not leave. the people in his division remember him gluing shingles on a dollhouse for his infant daughter. >> but army paperwork that would have confirmed his whereabouts, went missing.

>> the army paperworks everything, paperwork for paperwork. >> we looked for that and looked for that, and there was a checkout sheet for everything but that day. so the prosecutor had a field day. >> but before the second trial, richardson discovered why the paperwork went missing. >> the reason why is because the prosecutors had it. they didn't take a copy and leave it, they just took it. so this piece of evidence that would have exonerated him in 1986 was kept in the prosecutor's custody all of that time. >> and richardson also uncovered information that would undermine eyewitness pat cone. >> pat cone had helped them out in between trials and he was arrested using a stolen bank card. on another occasion, he was arrested for drinking, and being disruptive, and the state dropped the case. and he is known for telling people that the state couldn't touch him, because he was a prime witness. >> and pat is not a strong-willed person, and nice guy, and don't understand me, but he got into trouble there, but it was minor things. >> and still, richardson was not sure he could convince a jury

that cone had lied about seeing hennis, until a new piece of evidence was found. literally lying on the sidewalk. fz well, a mortgage shouldn't be a problem, your credit is in pretty good shape. >>pretty good? i know i have a 798 fico score, thanks to the tools and help on experian.com. kaboom... well, i just have a few other questions. >>chuck, the only other question you need to ask is, "what else can you do for me?" i'll just take a water... get your credit swagger on. become a member of experian credit tracker and find out your fico score powered by experian. fico scores are used in 90% of credit decisions. verizon say neversettle. t-mobile agrees.

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witanywhere on any device.you can manage your account anytime, just sign into my account to pay bills, manage service appointments and find answers to your questions. you can even check your connection status on your phone. now it's easier than ever to manage your account. get started at xfinity.com/myaccount richardson re-prepared for the retrial of tim hennis, new evidence turned up on the sidewalk in fayetteville. >> the deputy who picked up the wallet noted that there was a leter in it. and the letter said that tim

didn't do it. you were hearing rumors like that. >> and billy goes to the sheriff's department and he has to pretend that he is investigating another case, because if it was this case, it would have set off bells and whistles. and sure enough, the wallet belonged to a fellow named shawn buckner. >> it belonged to a friend of pat cone, the star witness. the letter called his testimony into question. >> that letter called his testimony into doubts. it told his fiance about doubts, and to the point they wrote each other a letter about it. >> so richardson flew to louisiana where he was in training with the air force, but when he got there, buckner closed the door in his face. he did not want to get involved. >> he had to decide whether or not to betray his friend and help someone wrongly accused of a triple murder. and shawn buckner had no reason to help tim hennis. >> richardson came home empty

handed, hoping buckner would eventually change his mind. the retrial of timothy hennis began on january 27th, 1989, almost four years after the brutal murders of gary eastburn's wife and daughters. >> the state went into a retrial-a replay of trial 1. but the defense had an entirely different case. >> we were going to drill him and film him and let him watch it. >> did you kill these three people? >> no, i did not kill these people. i have a daughter of my own, and i could not hurt any children at all. >> did you do this crime? >> no, i did not. >> and we felt that if he showed rage or emotion, the jury would say, there, you see, he could get to this point. >> how does this all make you feel? >> extremely upset and angry. >> on cross-examination, the prosecutor confronted hennis with the alleged motive for the murder. >> the prosecutor says that you lost your cool, and went in

there and tried to have sex with her, and when she refused you snapped and killed her. >> and they were trying to provoke him on the stand and he had to calmly say, i did not, i did not. and he said, i never had sex with that woman. that never happened. and when it was over, they did not get the reaction they wanted, and it was a different light that the jury had seen, and it made a huge difference. >> in the first trial, the absence of blood on the jacket made a difference in the first trial insisting that dry cleaner had removed the blood stains. but richardson saw it differently. >> and the dry cleaner said that you have to use a special chemical to remove blood. i said, did you use it in this case, and he said, no. >> and so when they challenged it, richardson was ready with his own expert. >> this chemist got some blood

and put it on a members only jacket, and then put some luminol on it, and it glowed right there. but hennis' on the other hand had no sign of blood. so richardson had turned the prosecution's evidence against them. and then lucille cook who swore she saw hennis at the atm. two days after the murder. >> lucille cook had made dozens and dozens of transactions around the time of the murder, and asked her if she could remember those, and of course, she could not. >> and there was a three 1/2 hour gap between her transaction and the transaction allegedly used by tim hennis. >> well, it does not seem like a lot, until you sit there and time it. we had the jury sit there and time it to see how long it was. >> it was the longest 3 1/2 minutes. >> why would the killer wait 3 1/2 minutes until someone sees him.

one of the jurors said that they got in the jury room and laughed at her. >> and now it was time for richard to go after the state's star witness, pat cone. after some soul searching shawn buckner agreed to testify against his old friend. he said that pat cone was extremely drunk that night, and in addition to that, he had doubts about what he saw. >> and patrick had told shawn buckner that he felt like he was sending an innocent man to prison. >> but richardson knew he had to answer one last question. >> in the back of their minds, the jury is saying that the kid saw something, and if it weren't your client, who was it? >> so, he called the next witness. >> the back doors opened and everybody turned around and the prosecutor said, who is that? >> that is as close to a perry mason moment as i have had. >> and the lead detective looked and said, we are in trouble. ♪ color is a beautiful thing, i know, i know... ♪

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tthey bought the place fourg to mark andmonths agoderson. on what was arguably the scariest day of their lives. neither has any idea what the future holds for them. but they bought into a 30-year mortgage anyway. that was bold. they must really believe in themselves. buy in. quickenloans/home buy. refi. power. (yells) (whitaxi!!!! ♪ where to? west 76th street. from us the orange juice growers, to you the orange juice lovers. enjoy florida's natural.

witanywhere on any device.you can manage your account anytime, just sign into my account to pay bills, manage service appointments and find answers to your questions. you can even check your connection status on your phone. now it's easier than ever to manage your account. get started at xfinity.com/myaccount defense attorney billy richardson had always wondered, if it wasn't tim hennis who did eyewitness pat cone see at the eastburn home on the night of the murders? >> billy was going door to door interviewing every neighbor and they found one couple who said, why don't you talk to that kid

who walks the street all of the time >> and they didn't know who he was, so billy did a vigil and it became this quest for the mythical figure of the walker. >> you can't win the case sitting in a walker. so i sat there for six weeks. >> richardson even hoped that he might find the real perpetrator, but he came up empty handed. and then before the second trial, richardson hired an investigator the renew the search, and finally, they found the mystery man, no murderer, but a high school senior who worked at the local supermarket. >> a guy by the name of john rupauh, who lived down the street and had a habit of walking the road in the morning. and he was a big blond kid with a blond mustache. >> and it fit, fit like a glove. >> so during the discovery, he

kept it from the prosecution for maximum impact. >> the back doors burst open. defense called john rupauh. and at 3:30 in the morning, you couldn't help but think, could that have been who cone saw walking down the road? >> this is another tall white guy blond walking down the street, and it is effective. >> the walker gave that jury a reason to have reasonable doubt. it gave them a reason to say it's not tim. >> when the walker took the stand, richardson asked what he wore on the nightly walks down sommer hill road. >> he wore a beanie hat, and he had a members only jacket. black members only jacket. >> after the walker's testimony, the defense moved to have the case thrown out. >> the defense accused the prosecution of outright cheating, because it turned out that the prosecutors knew exactly who john raupaugh was.

>> they had basically hidden him from us. >> and then the attorneys told the judge what they discovered about the prosecutor. >> they had him bring the jacket and the hat and they had taken it from him, and they had put it in one the trunk of one of the detective's trunk, and returned after tim was on death row. and that is the type of evidence that could have tilted the evidence in his original trial. >> and we were plain mad at that case. you get mad enough you have enough of this. >> we had sat there in the courtroom to thinking that he had been guilty to not sure that the jury will not find him guilty, to he didn't do it and they have to let him go and then the jury knocked. >> after deliberating for less than three hours, the jury

announced its verdict, not guilty on all counts. >> we just broke down and started crying, because i knew what had they had been through. and next to marrying my wife and the birth of my children, that is probably the happiest day of my life. >> we live with the family and felt what they've been through and it's a tremendous, tremendous load taking off of my shoulders. >> the jurors came out, and they were adamant that they needed to reinvestigate the case, and quit picking on the guy. >> why were they bothering this poor man and has he not suffered enough? a man who killed three children and a woman, how much did gary suffer? that's his life.

>> whether you like it or not, tim is our client and if he dies, we will live with it. >> in the years that follow, the hennis case was the textbook case of wrongful prosecution. scott whisnant spoke about the case, and it was adapted into a tv movie. >> not everybody sitting in prison is guilty. north carolina now has a commission that actually has released a number of innocent people. >> despite all of the attention to hennis' acquittal, the eastburn's murders would go unsolved for another 16 years until 20005 when scott whisnant spoke about the case at a criminology seminar, and he spoke at a seminar with larry spoke at a seminar with larry was in the audience. >> there were potentially other evidence out there. >> well, if he is innocent, who did it? the state of north carolina did

not pursue it for 17 years, and so why didn't they try to find out who it was. >> somebody was stalking that woman for weeks. mrs. eastburn was writing her husband saying somebody is stalking me, and why isn't that being looked at? who does it lead to? >> after he discussed the evidence, detective trauder approached him privately. >> he said, just want you to know that the way they investigate the case 20 years ago, we're not like that anymore and somebody should reinvestigate this case. technology has improved, and that is how we left it. >> in fact, trotter had been assigned by the sheriff's case to review cold cases. >> we had over 100 unsolved cases, and as i went through the docket, i realized that there was a vaginal swab that never had been sent off for testing, and when the murder happened, dna was in the infancy, and the obvious thing was to send it off for testing.

>> for over two decades gary eastburn had lived without closure for the devastating murder of his wife and two daughters. >> and we had done an injustice to this man, and how he withstood it, i don't know. you just wanted to do something for him, and you wanted to find out who did this. >> in may of 2006, the state lab contacted the sheriff's department and said they had found a positive match for the dna. detective bittle called gary eastburn to tell him the news. >> and i said to him, are you sitting down and he said, why? and i said, take a deep seat, i have something to tell you. i lost my sight in afghanistan, but it doesn't hold me back. i go through periods where it's hard to sleep at night, and stay awake during the day. non-24 is a circadian rhythm disorder that affects up to 70% of people who are totally blind. talk to your doctor about your symptoms

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after tim hennis had been freed from death row in 1989, he didn't know where to turn. >> i feel very diminish and very worn out, dragged out. i don't have the self-confidence and reliability that you once had. >> his lawyers told him to get out of the army, and it is a bad place to be, but you have been on death row, and there were not a lot of employers who would take that on, and the army had to take him back, so he stayed in. >> after readjusting to army life, tim hennis built a

successful 25-year career in the military. >> tim hennis served in somalia and desert storm honorably, and tim's supervising colonel told me that he was without a doubt the best nco that he had ever worked with. >> he retired in 2004 and he and angela had a son who they would not have had if he had not gotten his life back together. >> but tim had no idea that the eastburn case was about to be breaking wide open. a 21-year-old rape kit yielded new results. and the prosecutor called gary eastburn and said that there was a hit on the dna. and he said, who? and they said hennis. >> you could have knocked me over with a feather. just hit with a wave of emotion. god, i don't believe it.

>> i was so happy. i mean, i was walking on cloud nine. >> defense lawyer billy richardson was driving through mississippi when he heard the news. >> i said stop the car. it was just like somebody had taken a 2x4 and hit me upside of the head with it. >> i was convinced that if anybody could ever run an actual dna on that sample, they would find someone other than tim hennis, and i believed it with every fiber of my being. >> but the shocking dna results led to a pragmatic question. >> what do you do now? timothy hennis had been ajudeicated not guilty, and therefore, the south carolina was not going to try him again. >> we fought a revolutionary war because somebody could be tried over and over again for the same offense. and the founders put it in the constitution that there is no

double jeopardy in this country. >> i understand that, but certain cases like this, that you have a dna now that says this is the man who raped this woman and killed her, i think you should be able to and somehow the judicial system has to work around that. >> that was the d.a.'s office who decided to see if the army was interested in bringing him off of retirement and trying him for the murders. >> a team of lawyers from the ranks helped evaluate the case for the army. >> my personal opinion about why this is important to the military is that the military sent gary eastburn for duty in alabama, and his family was left behind, and they were murdered. >> i am sure that there was debate within the military. it is high profile, and controversial, but you had an enlisted person killing an officer's wife. how do you let that go? >> two years after he retired, timothy hennis was recalled to active duty.

as soon as he returned to fort bragg, hennis was charged with three counts of murder. >> tim hennis is the only person who has been tried and re-tried for murder three times. >> i cannot comment why it hasn't happened before. nothing the state does effects what the federal government can do. >> they can claim it is a different jurisdiction, but it is the state of north carolina to use the army to get to what they wanted to do, plain and simple. >> but billy richardson now on the sidelines, the court-martial of timothy hennis commenced on march 17th, 2010. the prosecutor's case hinged on the dna results. >> the sperm found in the vagina is the person who raped and

slaughtered her children and that is timothy hennis'. but the state lab said that the dna would be mixed up, and they were mixing up the samples and almost put an innocent guy in prison. let's take a look at your credit. >>i know i have a 786 fico score, thanks to all the tools and help on experian.com. so how are we going to sweeten this deal? floor mats... clear coats... >>you're getting warmer... leather seats... >>and this... my wife bought me that. get your credit swagger on. become a member of experian credit tracker and find out your fico score powered by experian. fico scores are used in 90% of credit decisions. verizon say neversettle. t-mobile agrees.

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in 2010, timothy hennis went on trial for the third time for the murders of katy eastburn and her daughters. but a scandal rocked the state lab that identified hennis' dna, the lab had been skewing results to help prosecutors. >> the woman who handled the sample in the '80s got in trouble for mixing up some dna samples in another case, and almost put an innocent guy in prison. >> they didn't do a good job of preserving the evidence and three people had been arrested for evidence tampering. >> hennis' lawyers asked for a postponement to investigate the lab, but the judge refused. >> meanwhile, the military prosecutors found a second smear from the rape kit and sent it to a new lab and the results also pointed to hennis. >> the medical examiner slide came back on every marker to the

defendant, tested by the crime lab, you had two chains of custody the defense could not attack the slide. >> for prosecutors, the dna result swept away all previous doubts. >> they went back and replayed the first two trials, some of the old discredited inferences. cone seeing him come down the driveway, the fact that he took the members only jacket to the dry cleaners. you had numerous pieces of evidence that tied him to the crime scene. >> and for the prosecution's case had numerous flaws. the top priority was to get their own evidence in front of the jury. there is a ton of physical

evidence in front of the house they can't explain. they found a head hair in the bed that is not tim hennis' and there is a pubic hair that is not tim's. >> there is male dna that is not tim's. and there is male dna under the daughter's fingernails that is not tim's. >> and nothing else came back to timothy hennis. underneath the fingernails is not his, but what is, is that vaginal swab. >> to me, the dna evidence of a woman who is raped is pretty damaging evidence. who is it? >> and the fingernail scrapings weren't enough for a full dna profile, so the defense asked to test all of the crime scene evidence that the might point to a different perpetrator including a blood-soaked towel. >> now, who had sex with her did not have necessarily kill her, but you can argue that whoever cleaned up the blood might have had something to do with it, but let's find out what happened. >> in the military if you need a test done, you have to ask the

army to do it for you. >> but the judge denied the request to test other items. >> i cannot imagine a judge in a civilian court not allowing that. you have the evidence, why not test it. >> without dna results pointing to a different suspect, hennis' lawyers decided to the offer an alternate explanation to the sperm. >> in the end they threw out the theory that tim hennis had consensual sex with mrs. eastburn. within a day or so of the homicides. >> and when he said that, you could feel the love leaving the room. everybody went, i don't believe he is saying that. >> there are certain things that you can do in front of the jury, and certain things that you can't. it is not how i would have done it. >> the 14-person court-martial jury declared unanimously that timothy hennis was guilty of murdering katy eastburn and her children. and the next task would be to decide if hennis deserved the death penalty.

>> when you have a man that for 25 years after released did nothing but served honorably, and still married to the same woman, why are you just going to look and say that's the monster. >> he leads the prayers at church and delivers cookies, and it doesn't make any difference. >> we are not there to say why he did it, but we are there to say he did it. >> the prosecution ended their presentation with another slide show. >> gary eastburn counted out the birthdays that he missed with his daughters. anniversaries, baptism. >> one of my trial partners asked gary, what do you miss the most? he just grimaced and with tears

in his eyes, he just said, them. >> on april 15th, 2010, the jury sentenced timothy hennis to death. >> but i feel vindicated for some of the things that you heard when you got a not guilty and the smiles and the smirks that you see from certain people, you damn right, i do, yes, sir, i do, i feel vindicated. >> tim hennis now sits in solitary confinement in fort leavenworth, kansas. his appeals in the military and federal courts could take decades. >> i still believe that tim is innocent, and i'm not his lawyer right now, so it would be improper for me to sit down and say, all right, tim, did you or didn't you? i'm dieing to have that conversation with him. but how can you put a man to death based solely on one piece of evidence? our country was formed on the premise that one person wrongly

convicted is a grave injustice. >> now i don't know what the outcome of this is to be, but this is a good case. i knew that we were right. i think that it is a good system. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com on this episode of "death row stories," the murder of a wealthy young man in the big easy, seals the fate of a petty drug dealer. >> that's the guy who did it, and there's no question in my mind -- >> and gives two out of town lawyers a crash course in new orleans justice. >> do you really understand what you're up against? >> when evidence of innocence emerges -- >> something was going on that was very unscrupulous and was very deliberate. >> the system will stop at nothing to get what it wants. >> we had struck out and he was going to die. >> there's a body in the water.